MoviePass To Stop Offering Unlimited Movies

The days of unlimited movies on MoviePass will soon have (movie)passed.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the company will soon do away with its very popular (but fiscally questionable) unlimited movies (or at least one a day) for $10 a month plan. In less than two weeks, they will switch everyone over to a new plan: Starting August 15 the price stays the same, but now you can only go to the movies three times in a month:

MoviePass Chief Executive Mitch Lowe said in an interview that the new policy, which takes effect Aug. 15, will reduce the company’s cash burn rate by more than 60% and make its attempted transition to profitability “more manageable.” As of June, MoviePass’s monthly cash deficit was $45 million, parent company Helios & Matheson Analytics Inc. said in regulatory filings.

Lowe claimed that 85 percent of customers see three or fewer movies a month, and therefore will be totally unaffected by the change. The recent price increase to $15 is going away, along with the restrictions on new releases they just instituted last week. And if you watch more than your allotment in a month, you get discounts of two to five dollars a ticket is you purchase through the MoviePass app.

$10 a month for three movies is still not a bad deal. If the company can make this work financially, it’s a very good offer for cinephiles, who can easily see that many films in a month. And MoviePass is taken in something like 90 percent of movie theaters, meaning it has more flexibility than the MoviePass competitors cropping up that are tied to a single theater chain like AMC or Cinemark. If MoviePass really can make this deal work, they may survive after all.